fried drive

stishdr

stishdr

New Member
Hi, my g/f spilt some water onto her pc, ended up hitting her harddrive, pretty sure it's fried, there was a burning smell coming from it, and the mobo doesn't recognize that the drive is there anymore when i turn the pc on(sata drive). I was wondering if i take it to a pc store, do u think they can get her files off of it, like music, documents, the OS? she doesn't have a disc, so if that can't come off, then we have to buy it. Last question, if no files can come off of the drive, do you think i can just buy a new hdd and install xp on it again..would that be a fairly smooth operation? thanks for ur help.

*it's a dell...if she had the recovery cd they gave her, could i install new hdd, and then insert recovery cd, that way no need to buy OS?*
 
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To recover anything from the magnetic disks inside you would have to bring it in to a professional service that deals with data recovery. The burnt smell points at one main thing if you immediately ran the drive. The read-write heads were in a sense glued to the platters inside. Drive heads depend on air flow as the platters spin to lift them up away from the surface.

If you allow time for the drive to dry out on the inside it may run long enough to retrieve files before a total crash. But that would be a slight chance depnding on what shape the drive will be in. A professional service will cost however. XP can be installed easily on the replacement drive.
 
The recovery disks are intended for use on the original drive for repair of the preinstalled copy of Windows there. Generally there will be a hidden portion or partition on the drive where backup files are kept for restoring the OS and softwares the system comes with. If the drive fails to work after a few days time to allow any moisture to dry out you will need a new installation disk for that machine. That's a rough situation there unfortunately.
 
so new hdd, and os is the solution, thankyou. i can get a xp pro install disc for cheap, 20 bucks through my school, so that's not bad. not sure if it has sp-2 on it or not, would have to download all those updates...:(
 
A new drive would guaranty a running system with a fresh installation of Windows if the drive was the only hardware effected that is. Hopefully that will be the thing hurt from this. Any new XP disks after 11/2004 will automatically have SP2 included. If you see SP2 going on when going for the some 84 updates at the current time that would be number #85 seen there!

With a recent reinstall of XP here on one drive it took quite awhile for #83 out of the 84 total not wanting WMP 11 to go on. Reboot after reboot. SP2 can be downloaded separately and saved to a folder on the drive if you end up with an SP1 disk like the one first used here for XP. The full 266mb service pack can be found at http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/Windows-XP-SP2-RTM.shtml
 
it should be the only defect, cause when i turn the pc on, i can go into the bios and mess with things in there, but then it can't boot cause it doesn't recognize that the harddrive is there. i get a message on a black screen saying "NO boot device found, f1 to retry, f2 to enter setup"
 
Well as I stated earlier it's going to take a few days for the moisture inside the drive to dry out IF the drive can still be used long enough for copying files from it. The read-writes at this time if still any good are stuck to the magnetic disks inside. Those count on dry air flow to lift them only a small fraction in thousands of an inch above the disks. If you can save anything unplug the drive for the time being otherwise....? You don't want something else to cook inside there do you?
 
Let it sit for a while.

One time, we had a drive that stopped spinning.
We were like Shit! :[
So we bought a new one, set the new as master... installed Windows.. blah blah.
Still didn't work.
Then we sent it up to Canada (I live in Buffalo, so it's not too far).
Paid 70 bucks for a recovery service, they said they can't get anything off of it.
We were like, WTF? And we still have to pay?


So my dad figured we have nothing left to lose, so he loosened the screw on the front in the middle.
And the drive worked -.-

We didn't trust it anymore... But recently we had all the stuff to put a new copmuter together, minus a case.
So I went and bought a case... stuck everything in there, and used that same HDD in the computer :p
Works like a charm -.-
anyway, sorry to ramble.
But uhm.
Don't give up on it :p

Let it dryyyy :s


*edit*
That's why we only by WD and Seagate drives from now on :]
It was a cheap Hitachi thinger.
figured we'd go the cheaper route to save some money, and got burned -.-
 
The first thing that should be done for the obvious reasons is to unplug the ac cord and get the one or two side covers off and even start pulling hardwares and the board out to see just what got wet. The initial burn smell was most likely water getting into the plugs(power-ide cable connector) if not inside the drive itself. That will more or less short things out there.

If the drive wasn't damaged too far initially keeping the system going with anything else wet could be disasterous there. Most drives are generally sealed well due to the need to keep the small space between drive heads and platter free of any debris while not always being totally air tight. Getting inside with a small fan can help speed up the drying time. You will also want to make sure no water or drink is still left in small puddle at the bottom of the case.
 
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